We've all seen the horrors of genetic engineering. Whether it'll be in literature or popular culture, we've seen it all. In a timeless novel, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, when the society as a whole tinkered with the biology of humans, a new world is created, one in which babies are "designed" to be either superior to all others and placed in the upper strata of the society while the inferiors belong as servants to the aristocrats. In fact, in Huxley's dystopia, the "Epsilons", the inferiors, are incubated in such a way that they are too stupid to think for themselves. Oh the horror the horror, the horror of genetic engineering.
Let's think back for a second, does genetic engineer really deserve such a bad wrap? Just because genetic engineering has unknown side effects and look as if we humans are playing God, does that mean that genetic engineer is the devil's work? Rationally, I think not.
But before I let loose my argument, what is genetic engineering, really?
Genetic engineering today came a long way, and so is our strife to bring nature in our control. Like all organisms we were once controlled by nature, until natural selection and sheer luck made us bipeds, and that is when we started to bend nature to our wills. According to Richard Resnick, it is perhaps an "evolutionary" process that we begin to tame nature. The closest thing we did to engineer nature before Crick and Watson is selectively breed animals. Today, with the advent of machines like the PCR that could exponentially replicate DNA, the availability to genomic data of thousands of species and the discovery of multiple endonucleases that could easily cut and splice up DNA, we could virtually "edit" genomes of any organism we want. For instance, in multiple species, we inserted "glowing" genes found in jellyfish in genomes of domestic animals like dogs and cats. With that said, such a thing could be easily done in humans, just slap on one of those jelly fish genes into our genome and we'll be glowing in dark--no need for lights.
Back to the argument.
If we could insert jelly fish genes into many, if not all domestic animals, we could do a whole lot more. Like making corn translate natural pesticides derived from weeds or creating the EnviroPig, a pig that digest it's own phosphorus waste! Clearly, genetic engineering stopped countless of people from starving to death since the Green Revolution. It has been the way since the late 50's and why stop now, if I may ask? Some would say that it is sacrilegious to tamper with God's work, but is it God's will to enable his chosen people to propagate the Earth? If so, it might be in God's intention for humans to continue his work, to find new ways to feed his flock. Some would say that genetic engineering would have dire consequences if it genetically engineered organisms found its way into the wild. Although we don't know that there would be such a "dire" consequence, we can certainly prevent the spread of GMO by growing them in contained areas such as green houses. In fact, in South America, GM plants have been grown in open areas proximal to forests and there are no detectable fallouts of the contamination that surfaced. Some claimed that GMO's are carcinogens, but such a claim was never been conclusively proven, for these organisms had it's genome modified, not the other way round. The cornerstone of the argument AGAINST GM is simply the fact that we don't know the consequences of GM on us and the environment, therefore, GMO must have some horrible fallouts so we must cease the production of these vile creatures. Clearly, just because there is not yet a theory that debunks the law of gravity does not mean that it's flawed. On the other hand, if there are risks associated with consumption of GMO, it's a risk worth taking, for without GM food, the world could not have sustained it's population. If we fail to take the risk, like Ethiopia who banned the donation of GMO from the west, would do so at the expense of 15 million people starving to death. Genetic engineer has been the way for many decades, and will be for centuries after today.
No comments:
Post a Comment